Immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson writing at the New York Times magazine pretends to write the definitive story on what is happening to Twin Falls, Idaho.
“How Fake News turned a small town upside down”
Her story is huge, but missed a lot, either on purpose, or possibly her editors skewed the story she submitted.
I have no intention of taking her on point by point (it would take all day). But, I wanted you to know this is out there and to say just a couple of things….
First, Chobani Yogurt lawyers attempted to silence many media outlets, not just Breitbart and Infowars. (Although most will never admit it.)
Secondly, she spends an inordinate amount of time on Lee Stranahan, a former Breitbart reporter impugning his character and motives, but she only touches on the mayor (in glowing terms) who played an instrumental role in luring Chobani Yogurt (which brags about its huge refugee workforce) to Twin Falls in the first place in his leadership role at the Chamber of Commerce. (Not mentioned by Dickerson).
And, finally, she sees nothing wrong with the local newspaper editor’s role in driving his Leftist view of the world by attempting to coerce elected city officials to write opinion pieces supporting refugee resettlement.
Part of the reason a fear of Islam has persisted in Twin Falls is because the local leadership refused to defuse it, according to Matt Christensen, 36, the editor of The Times-News. While Brown wrote articles that sorted out the truth about the Fawnbrook case, Christensen was publishing commentary that castigated the people who were spreading falsehoods. He told me that he had closed-door meetings with city officials, in which he asked them to write guest editorials doing the same, but none of them did. Christensen suspected that they were afraid of one of the most reliable political dangers in the region, the same force that leads would-be Democrats there to register as Republicans: being outflanked on the right is the quickest way to lose your job.
“Behind closed doors, they would all tell you they were pro-refugee, and we [Who is we? —ed] wanted them to step forward and make that declaration in a public arena, and it just never really happened,” he told me. “That was frustrating to us especially at the beginning because it really felt like the newspaper was out there all alone.” He continued: “There were days where we felt like, Godammit, what are we doing here? We write a story and it’s going to reach 50,000 people. Breitbart writes a story and it’s going to reach 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 million people. What kind of a voice do we have in this debate?” [Obviously Matt has the NY Times now!—ed]
This isn’t the first time we have written about Christensen and his blatant and shameful effort to use his position as editor of a small town paper to push his world view.
In ten years, he is the only newspaper editor who ever legally threatened me, a small time blogger (in 2015, long before the rape ever happened), see here.
And, he played the controlling role as moderator in that dog and pony show sponsored by his paper that brought the US State Department/ORR to Twin Falls, see here.
I contend that the number one purveyor of fake news in all of this is The Times-News!
As much as the New York Times would like to put this story to rest, they haven’t and they won’t. Someone should write a book about Twin Falls as a microcosm of how American cities are being changed forever to satisfy the cheap labor desires of huge global corporations. Twin Falls has it all!
(And, if it is true that Breitbart pulled back reporter Stranahan, they made a huge error in judgement!). Again, Twin Falls has it all!
See my archive on Twin Falls going back several years, here.